


Câlisse-moi là

by elephantastic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Minor Injuries, also not suicidal ideation exactly, and of s3 Jon trying to care about people and not being very good at it, but that's ok so am i, but there's discussion of Tim's s3 state of mind so it toes the line, local archivist's inner monologue shows him to be a bit of a pretentious twerp, not in a purposeful self-harm kind of way but does end up hurting himself, specifically Tim picks at his worm scars, the inherent tragedy of what ifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephantastic/pseuds/elephantastic
Summary: “I’m grand, boss. Absolutely fucking grand. Just putting in some overtime.” His smile is abrasive as steel wool: in true Tim Stoker fashion, the best defence is still a strong offence. Jon remembers when the same strategy relied on disarmingly genuine charm rather than naked aggression and feels like he's looking at the negative of a photo. It gnaws at him, how much he misses Tim. He wonders if, maybe, Tim misses him back.Jon finds Tim in the archives after his return from the US and before their conversation in MAG114. Things come to a head.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker
Comments: 49
Kudos: 245





	Câlisse-moi là

It’s late and quiet when Jon finds Tim sat behind his old desk, scratching. Not idly, there’s this awful tension in his face, but he’s unfocused and the way he’s dragging his nails backwards and forwards across the bare length of his forearm seems almost mechanical.

Jon knows what this is. He’s intimately familiar with the phantom ache of something uncurling itself lazily underneath the pockmarks in his skin, like it’s been waiting there, burrowed in tight, for him to be ripe and ready. Familiar also with the need to claw at it as it wakes up, dig into himself until he unearths whatever it is. After a while he’s never sure if he’s trying to get rid of it or help it emerge. 

Maybe it’s the deep-seated need to understand that has always had him mapping patterns and clues on instinct, maybe it’s just the archivist in him wising up, but he’s come to recognise that the toxic lilt of the hive only ever creeps in when he’s feeling vulnerable and isolated. As that thought coalesces, the rough scrape of nails against skin becomes unbearable. He doesn’t want Tim to be alone.

He starts walking over, the gutless part of him whispering snidely that he should think twice about inserting himself where he’s not wanted. It's not enough to stop him. He knows now that absence was the worst mistake he could have made with Tim and he’ll gladly take another bollocking over the chance of repeating it.

The top of Tim’s desk is mostly empty—Melanie got fed up and cleared away the dead plant and the ruined monitor with “STOP WATCHING” scored across the screen—but a scattering of random crap indicates that Tim had been rifling through the drawers before he got distracted by the itch.

Jon sucks a sympathetic breath through his teeth. It’s worse than he thought: most of Tim’s forearm is a red, inflamed mess, and he’s broken the skin in places, clear fluid seeping out around the edges.

“Tim.”

Tim looks up at him, blank. Makes sense, if he were functioning normally he wouldn’t have let Jon see him like this. Or at all for that matter. Jon can’t remember the last time he was even in the bullpen. He’s still scratching. Jon wraps a hand around Tim’s and gently pulls him off himself.

“Tim, you need to stop.”

There’s a moment of stillness. The inside of Tim’s wrist is warm against the pads of Jon’s fingers. Then the contact breaks through his stupor, and Tim yanks himself free, leaning as far away from Jon as his desk chair will allow. Disoriented and wrong-footed, he starts snarling.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing, you—” Jon watches as Tim struggles to cover up the worst of the raw patch on his arm, and clumsily tries to give them both some plausible deniability. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m grand, boss. Absolutely fucking grand. Just putting in some overtime.” His smile is abrasive as steel wool: in true Tim Stoker fashion, the best defence is still a strong offence. Jon remembers when the same strategy relied on disarmingly genuine charm rather than naked aggression and feels like he's looking at the negative of a photo. It gnaws at him, how much he misses Tim. He wonders if, maybe, Tim misses him back.

It’s a silly, fanciful thought. Certainly nothing about the way Tim’s bristling at him now seems to invite Jon’s continued presence, let alone anything else. Jon should back off. Like he usually does.

It's a quiet revelation to find that he doesn’t want to. He bites into the surge of sudden contrariness, bolstering himself, and stands his ground. Starts searching for the words that will turn his little rebellion into something more than awkward dithering.

It’s hard, harder than it should be, because of course there’s the issue of the tape. Jon can’t look at Tim, let alone talk to him, without that damn tape catching in his gears like grit. He feels like a voyeur, all gummed up with not knowing how to tell Tim that he’s listened, that he’s desperately sorry, that he understands, even if it’s in a way that’s messed up and a little bit inhuman. He needs to own up. The idea of trying is terrifying.

He veers away from dangerous waters and wades straight into trouble.

“I just wanted to check in. We haven’t, um, been seeing you around the office much lately.”

Tim’s eyebrows climb up his forehead as Jon gestures lamely at the desk between them. His reply, when it comes, is appropriately scathing.

“This is fun. Trying a more hands-on management style, are we? Bit late for that I would’ve thought.”

It stings. Jon hates the mockery of professional distance Tim puts up to punish him. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, but it winds him up without Tim even trying.

Jon sighs, tries again. “I just worry. W—”

Tim sits forward as he interrupts, reorganising himself into something solid and intimidating for Jon to glance off. “Hah. Don’t much like the sound of that. Last time you _worried_ , you developed a bit of a stalking problem.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“How nice for you.”

“I just mean, I know what it’s like. I can help.”

“Oh you _do_ , do you?”

“ _Yes_ , Tim.”

“Just wondering, am I on the clock here, boss? Are mandatory heart to hearts also part of the creepy, unbreakable contract I’m tied up in or am I allowed to tell you to just fuck off?”

“Stop talking to me like I’m—” Jon hears himself getting confrontational, all vicious and snippy, and reins it in. Tim gives no quarter.

“Like you’re what?” The final ‘t’ is clipped with contempt. Jon breaks.

“We were friends.”

The words shrivel his tongue on the way out. They’re pathetic and whiny and far, far too close to the bone; a breach of the unspoken rules dictating that Tim snipes, Jon takes it, and they both pretend there wasn’t a time when Tim called him boss playfully and winked at him over in-jokes and sang him happy birthday. When Jon teased back and spent hours reading up on neo-gothic architecture just for the pleasure of being able to keep up when Tim was on a roll. A time before that in Research when Tim flirted with Jon as honestly as he did with anyone else, and Jon let them fall into orbit with each other. Now, in the rigid, angry silence, it feels a lot more like a collision course.

“Right. Sure.” Tim’s tone is flat and dead. His eyes skip away from Jon’s. “I can’t—deal with this tonight. Whatever it is you think you’re doing, don’t bother.”

“Don’t—” As usual words elude Jon when he needs them most. He wishes stupidly for the fluid certainty of a read statement as frustration makes him fumble, “ _Tim_.”

He’s sick and tired of sliding off Tim’s hostility. What started as an urge to comfort has shifted into the selfish need to elicit any reaction that isn’t steeped three layers deep in resentment and posturing. He wants to knock Tim out of it, maybe even knock him down a peg or two, and there is a weakness here, a crack. All he has to do is exert some goddamn pressure. Casting about for leverage, he plants his hands on the desk and leans all the way into Tim’s space.

Of course, Tim, who wields his physicality like it’s nothing, doesn’t budge an inch. The self-righteous rant Jon hoped to punctuate flounders and dies on the sharp edges of his scowl, and all Jon manages to do is fluster himself further. Their faces are very close.

Jon is hit by a sense memory. A real Proustian madeleine moment. It feels incredibly vivid as it bubbles up to the surface of his mind, too detailed, like it’s coloured by more than just his own subjectivity: Tim dragging Jon on a library run because he was in a snit, and Tim wanted the excuse of the ‘quiet please!’ signs to duck his head in conspiratorially close. He’d quipped and prodded, creating nooks of ease around them in the private corners of the Mystic and Occultism section until it was impossible for Jon to stay cross.

Not that he'd let on. He’d played up his stuffiness to avoid tipping his hand—budding infatuation held close to his chest—but also just to make Tim laugh. And Tim had, like he knew exactly what Jon was doing and was delighted to be in on it. Then he’d boxed Jon in against the shelves with his big shoulders and his outrageously straightforward sincerity, and kissed him on the cheek. It was chaste enough, but Tim had taken up so much room Jon could barely breathe.

The problem is, bruised and closed-off as he’s become, Tim still makes breathing difficult, and the upper hand Jon fantasized for himself is well and truly gone. He’s left stranded, thinking about the press of Tim’s lips and itching to do for Tim what Tim consistently did for him.

He did always start with provocation.

It’s all a bit muddled, but Jon thinks he wants it to land as something light. Daring. The lingering afterimage of the way Tim had looked at him after, in the library stacks, makes him miss the mark by a mile.

Tim tenses when Jon kisses him, too hard and raw and revealing. Then he tilts his face up for more, and his hands are all over. Jon knows a stretched-out moment of screaming relief as Tim curls a fist into his collar to pull him closer. There’s a palm along Jon’s jaw, fingers dig into the back of his neck; Tim opens his mouth.

A strained noise escapes them both at the sensation. It’s needy and embarrassing, and they go harder at each other for it. There’s so much heat in the narrow space between their faces that Jon realises Tim must be blushing as ferociously as he is. The thought sends a thrill careening through his stomach.

Jon’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for Tim to give in like this. The roiling energy that pours off him these days is wildly communicative at close range, and Jon can’t help but respond to it. Their stubble rasps together. Their noses bump. The frantic desperation accumulating in the muffled pants between kisses is brilliantly good until all of a sudden it’s not.

A weird, empty weight makes itself at home in Jon’s chest. What they’re doing echoes with possibility in a way that feels utterly disconsolate, like the gaping hole left by a missed opportunity. For all they’re trying, intensity is a poor substitute for intimacy. The pretence is its own special kind of heartache. And there’s so much ruined ground between them.

Jon thinks Tim might sense it too. He lets him press further into the kiss anyway. Understands the need to try. He wants to touch Tim in return except his braced arms are the only thing keeping him upright. Tim marks the shifting of Jon’s weight and realigns them to help him balance, considerate in a way Jon knew he would be. Jon reaches out until his knuckles bump against Tim’s chest and he can follow the line of buttons up Tim’s stupid, loud shirt. When he unfurls his hand against the side of Tim’s neck, he manages to tuck his ring and little fingers in under the collar. He can feel where Tim’s trapezius builds into the strong line of his throat; feel, too, the vibration behind the battered little moan Tim makes when he finally gives up and pulls back.

They don’t go far. Tim angles his face away, but leans their foreheads together. Jon strokes his thumb along the underside of Tim’s jaw. They breathe with each other for a long minute, the dark behind their eyelids providing a semblance of privacy in which to recover themselves. Then Tim slumps against the backrest of his chair, and the aftermath rushes up to meet them.

Tim looks at Jon. Looks _to_ Jon as if to ask: what do we do with this mess we’ve made? There’s a superficial wariness to him, like he’s reached the end of his rope and, much as he’d like to, putting his guard all the way back up demands more than he has to give. Off-kilter as he is, Jon doesn’t feel up to negotiating another conversation littered with landmines, so he takes the ceasefire and looks back.

Surprisingly, Tim allows it. He’s a lovely constellation, speckled with scars and freckles, and his mouth has a shine to it. _I put that there. I can still taste him and he can still taste me._ The idea feels shivery and transgressive as it dances through Jon’s head. But he still hasn’t learned that to look properly at anything nowadays is to see too much, and the fluttering is snuffed out as his insides snag on the hurt brimming in Tim’s eyes. 

Tim carries his bereavement bodily, a painful and ever-expanding weight that has never been as obvious to Jon as it is right now. Although, the shape of it isn’t quite what he expected. Jon frowns at this foreign, nonsensical thought. Then he becomes aware of the tightening that comes with Knowing and, before he can get a grip, it all resolves itself with a clarity he neither wants nor is entitled to.

Tim is grieving for Danny and Sasha, yes. But essentially, overwhelmingly he’s grieving for himself. And for a moment Jon sees him through his own eyes: a dead man walking towards an end that has become inevitable simply because he can’t conceive of an alternative. 

It’s gutting. Part of Jon refuses to compute. His brain helpfully provides a frame of reference: a broad iconographic pantheon full of rapturous saints and god-touched pilgrims. But there’s nothing to sublimate in the bleak reality of Tim’s martyrdom. Just fear and cold, harsh alienation.

“Oh.” Jon’s voice is thick. He tries to swallow around it. “Tim.”

The hurt overflows all at once.

“Fuck.” It’s more sob than word, swallowed before it could turn noisy. Tim drags a hand across his face. Once. Twice. It doesn’t help him compose himself, just smears obvious wet streaks down his cheeks.

The miserable scrunch of Tim’s eyebrows is too much for Jon to handle. He makes an ineffectual sound of compassion and rounds the desk, opening his arms as he goes. It’s a tentative offering, unsure of its reception, but Tim is already halfway to standing and Jon welcomes his damp face into the crook of his neck, lets him bunch his hands up so tight in the back of Jon’s jumper that the taut fabric at the collar starts to choke him. This isn’t the kind of loss that can be lessened or reframed, only witnessed, so Jon stands with Tim in front of the enormity of his grief and holds him as he shakes.

Bitterness soaks through him in time to Tim’s soggy, broken-up breaths. He feels so fucking inept he could scream. A bloody bull in a china shop. But really what he’s just done is worse than ineptitude, much more insidious. Just because he didn’t intend to, doesn't mean he can chalk it up to clumsiness, and just because Tim didn’t feel it—Jon doesn’t think he would’ve been allowed to touch him if he had—doesn’t mean Jon didn’t violate a fundamental boundary. Another layer of guilt crusts onto the corroded wreckage of their relationship. 

Tim disengages before Jon’s ready to let him go, still pale-faced and fragile. This time Jon rushes into the silence. 

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Tim. Let me—I’ve got supplies in my desk, we can clean you up. Disinfect your arm. We can talk.” He takes a deep breath. He has precious little to offer, and the idea of holding out his empty hands and asking Tim to trust him is laughable to the point of being insulting. He does it anyway. “Let me help.”

Tim is holding himself very carefully. Jon can guess at an answer by the way he won’t meet his eyes.

“No. I—can't. You need to go.”

Jon understands. Tim’s shown him all he can bear to, and the need to lick his wounds in private outweighs any comfort that Jon could possibly give him.

Too little, too late.

Jon understands, he does, but the idea of leaving Tim to deal with this by himself is repellent. He wants to argue and rage, pit himself against Tim’s implacable hopelessness and win. He opens his mouth to do just that.

“Jon. Please.” 

Tim brings his eyes up, and what little steam Jon had managed to work up is killed outright. After everything, he’s not going to make Tim beg for his dignity.

“Yes, of course.” 

He forces the words out in a rush, and Tim exhales all at once, like he was bracing for a fight that didn't come. 

“Thanks, boss.”

He softens the not-quite-nickname with the faintest hint of a smile, and Jon almost falters as impotent shame churns horribly in his belly.

“Top left draw, there’s gauze and disinfectant. It happens to me, too. I—Take care of yourself.” It’s an incredibly stupid and self-serving thing to say, but Jon means it with everything he has.

Tim does him the undeserved kindness of a nod. There’s nothing for it. Jon beats his retreat.

**Author's Note:**

> hugely inspired by luftballons99 and andlatitude's jontim stuff ([x](https://luftballons99.tumblr.com/post/190123212166/i-hate-youbut-i-love-youbut-i-hate-y), [x](https://luftballons99.tumblr.com/post/615739133753802752/been-a-while-since-my-last-jontim), [x](https://andlatitude.tumblr.com/post/615603079214219264/i-had-to-post-them-together-too-though-because), [x](https://andlatitude.tumblr.com/post/615714649665568768), [x](https://twitter.com/aandlatitude/status/1254243859225165825)) which took turns in absolutely kicking my nuts off.
> 
> thank you [ bry @pretentious_procrastinator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pretentious_Procrastinator/pseuds/Pretentious_Procrastinator) for the beta!
> 
> debated for a while whether or not it was ooc for Jon to cut and run. in the end he already made himself very vulnerable by offering once. it takes a lot of courage and emotional intelligence to provide help when it's needed but not wanted without doing more damage than good, and given his hang-ups re: being Too Much and unwanted i just don't think s3 Jon has it in him to insist.
> 
> please let me know if you have any thots, and if you enjoyed this you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://benevolentbridgetroll.tumblr.com/post/617107257731203072/luftballons99-and-andlatitude-have-been-posting). quarantine sucks and i need feeding xxxx


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